InxGayAl1−x−yN (0<=x<=1, 0<=y<=1) is one of the materials of choice for fabricating short wavelength light-emitting devices. In recent years, researchers worldwide have developed many novel InGaAlN-based light-emitting devices, such as blue, green, and white light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and violet semiconductor lasers. Meanwhile, InGaAlN is also a good material for manufacturing high-performance electronic devices. Among existing technologies, methods for fabricating InGaAlN materials on sapphire and SiC substrates are relatively mature. Based on these publicly available technologies, one can fabricate high-quality InGaAlN materials. However, since SiC substrates are very expensive, using SiC substrates to fabricate InGaAlN can incur high costs. Sapphire is also costly. Furthermore, sapphire is an insulator and is difficult to process. An InGaAlN device fabricated on a sapphire substrate cannot have a vertical electrode configuration. As a result, fabricating InGaAlN devices on a sapphire substrate can be complex and costly. Silicon, being a mature semiconductor material, is not only cheap, but also easy to control in terms of conduction type and resistivity. Moreover, techniques for processing silicon are fairly mature. Using silicon substrates to fabricate InGaAlN materials can significantly reduce the associated costs. However, silicon and InGaAlN materials exhibit considerable lattice and thermal-expansion-coefficient mismatch. Consequently, InGaAlN materials fabricated on a silicon substrate often exhibit high dislocation density. Dislocations in the InGaAlN material can serve as non-radiation recombination centers. Therefore, light-emitting devices fabricated with materials having high dislocation density often exhibit low light-emitting efficiency.